Mine death toll is mounting
Anger in the streets over ‘ worst tragedy’
Soma, Turkey – Women sang improvised ballads about the departed over freshly dug graves today as backhoes carved row upon row of graves into the dirt and hearses lined up outside a cemetery with more victims of Turkey’s worst mining disaster.
Rescue teams recovered another eight victims, raising the death toll to 282, with 142 people still unaccounted for, according to government figures.
The disaster has set off protests around Turkey and thrown Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s presidential ambitions off stride. Blackening his reputation further, one of Erdogan’s aides was seen kicking a protester held on the ground by police.
At a graveyard in the western town of Soma, where coal mining has been the main industry for decades, women wailed loudly in an improvised display of mourning.
They swayed and sang songs about their relatives as the bodies were taken from coffins and lowered into their graves.
‘‘ The love of my life is gone,’’ some sang, chanting the names of dead miners.
No miner has been brought out alive since yesterday from the Soma coal mine where the explosion and fire took place.
Many mourners
said
they
spent their whole lives like this.
‘‘ The wives of the miners kiss their husbands in the morning. When they come back, even if they are five minutes late, everyone starts calling. You never know what is going to happen,’’ said Gulizar Donmez, 45, the daughter and wife of a miner and neighbour of one of the victims.
Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said the search for survivors had been
fearing something hampered by a mine fire that had spread to a conveyor system – engulfing a 200 metre- long stretch.
But progress had been made on extinguishing it.
Erdogan, who is expected to soon announce his candidacy for Turkey’s presidential election in August, was not welcome during his visit to the area.
He was forced to take refuge at a supermarket after angry crowds called him a murderer and a thief, in a reference to alleged corruption, and clashed with police.
Turkish newspapers Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and others printed photographs they said were of an Erdogan aide kicking a protester who was on the ground and being held by special forces police.
The papers identified Yusuf Yerkel.
The prime minister’s office distanced itself from the incident, with one official saying the issue was
the
aide as Yerkel’s ‘‘ own personal matter’’.
Turkish president Abdullah Gul, visiting Soma, described the events in Soma as ‘‘ a huge disaster.’’
The mood was more restrained than during Erdogan’s visit, though locals angry at what they saw as the slow rescue operation still shouted jibes at him, demanding more should be done to reach possible survivors.
Erdogan earlier appeared somewhat tone- deaf to residents’ grief, calling mining accidents ‘‘ ordinary things’’ that occur in many other countries after giving examples of 19th- century mine accidents in Britain.
Protests broke out in Istanbul, Ankara and other cities over the deaths and poor safety conditions at mines around the country.
In Istanbul and Izmir, authorities used water cannons and tear gas to break up the protests.
Authorities said the disaster followed an explosion and a fire at a power distribution unit, and most deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning.
The death toll made worst mining accident.
It topped a 1992 gas explosion that killed 263 workers near the Black Sea port of Zonguldak.
Erdogan promised the tragedy would be investigated to its ‘‘ smallest detail’’ and that ‘‘ no negligence will be ignored’’. Prosecutors have been assigned.
Turkey’s Labor and Social Security Ministry said the mine had been inspected five times since 2012, most recently in March, when no safety violations were detected.
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Turkey’s